can see the mystery,
How, along the aisle of history
Where the feet of sages go,
Loveliest to the purest eyes,
Grand the mystic tapet lies,--
Soft and smooth, and even spreading
Every figure has its plaidings,
As if made for angels' treading;
Tufted circles touching ever,
Inwrought figures fading never;
Brighter form and softer shadings;
Each illumined,--what a riddle
From a cross that gems the middle.

'Tis a saying--some reject it--
That its light is all reflected;
That the tapet's hues are given
By a sun that shines in heaven!
'Tis believed, by all believing,
That great God himself is weaving,--
Bringing out the world's dark mystery,
In the light of truth and history;
And as web and woof diminish,
Comes the grand and glorious finish;
When begin the golden ages
Long foretold by seers and sages.

The Mortgage on the Farm

'Tis gone at last, and I am glad; it stayed a fearful while,
And when the world was light and gay, I could not even smile;
It stood before me like a giant, outstretched its iron arm;
No matter where I looked, I saw the mortgage on the farm.

I'll tell you how it happened, for I want the world to know
How glad I am this winter day whilst earth is white with snow;
I'm just as happy as a lark. No cause for rude alarm
Confronts us now, for lifted is the mortgage on the farm.

The children they were growing up and they were smart and trim.
To some big college in the East we'd sent our youngest, Jim;
And every time he wrote us, at the bottom of his screed
He tacked some Latin fol-de-rol which none of us could read.

The girls they ran to music, and to painting, and to rhymes,
They said the house was out of style and far behind the times;
They suddenly diskivered that it didn't keep'm warm--
Another step of course towards a mortgage on the farm.

We took a cranky notion, Hannah Jane and me one day,
While we were coming home from town, a-talking all the way;
The old house wasn't big enough for us, although for years
Beneath its humble roof we'd shared each other's joys and tears.

We built it o'er and when 'twas done, I wish you could have seen it,
It was a most tremendous thing--I really didn't mean it;
Why, it was big enough to hold the people of the town
And not one half as cosy as the old one we pulled down.

I bought a fine pianner and it shortened still the pile,
But, then, it pleased the children and they banged it all the while;
No matter what they played for me, their